Process only edited fields in Codeigniter form - php

Question

I have a multi field search form I'm creating. There are 9 different search fields. None of them are mandatory, though. The only requirement is that you have to fill in at least one field.
They all show a default value (i.e. 'State') upon load instead of using labels to indicate what the purpose of the search field is. So, if you edit one field but leave the other eight alone then all nine will still have a value posted.
Is there any good, efficient way to handle this? I'd prefer to not have to manually do the logic in either jQuery before posting (e.g.if($(inputid).val() == 'Default Value') { ...) or the controller (e.g. if($this->input->post('name') == 'default value') { $data['name'] = '') because there will be a few iterations of this search throughout the site, so a dynamic solution would be incredibly helpful and save a bunch of time.
Thanks!
EDIT
here's the gist of what I ended up with after #veddermatic's post below:
rendered form:
<form id="search-form" action="spend/search">
<input id='fname' value='First Name' data-original_value='First Name' name='fname'/>
<input id='lname' value='Last Name' data-original_value='Last Name' name='lname'/>
...
</form>
ghost form:
<form id="ghost-form" action="spend/search">
<!--nothing here yet-->
</form>
jquery to handle it all:
$('.do-the-search').click(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
$('#search-form input').each(function() {
var $this = $(this);
if($this.attr('data-original_value') != $this.val())
{
var clone = $this.clone();
$("#ghost-form").append(clone);
}
});
$("#ghost-form").submit();
});

Answer 1

One option would to have two forms, the "normal" form you have currently, and a "ghost" form (it has no submit button or visible fields) with the same target and action as the one presented to the user.
When you build / render the form to the user, give each input a class you can use to iterate over them with, and put the pre-filled value into a data attribute:
<input type="text" class="myFormInput" name="in1" data-original_value="blah" value="blah" />
<input type="text" class="myFormInput" name="in2" data-original_value="something" value="something" />
....
Then handle the user-facing form submit with javascript, iterate over the .myFormInput elements, and if they have a value different from the original value, create an input element with the same name in your "ghost" form, then submit that form. This will only send changed elements, and if for some reason they have javascript off / disabled, your gracefully degrade because your original form will still submit.
EDIT: you could very easily turn this into a plugin and use it on all your forms if you do have multiple instances so you'd just have to do something like: jQuery('#userFacingForm').ghostForm();